Elements of Distance Education Diffusion

Distance Education (DE) has come a far way from what it use to be prior to the current 21st century. In the previous century, and possibly beyond, DE encompasses technology tools like radio, network television, telecommunication satellites, cable television, and up to recently, the Internet. George Siemens, the theorist for connectivism - a learning theory for the digital age, and strategist and researcher at the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University, identified three possible elements of DE: Global diversity, communication, and collaborative interaction.

In describing these factors, Siemens saw them as fueling the growing acceptance of DE. He briefly described global diversity as communication within the corporate world among businesses worldwide. Also, in a looking at communication; he said that its online increase stems from the practical experience gained by the many users of new communicative tools of technology. With reference to the collaboration factor, Siemens said that it’s a growing comfort with online discourse. These views put forward by Siemens are indicative of what’s happening in communicative technology in the 21st century. If this communication was to be removed, communicators would certainly be literally distant from each other, in both time and space, which would most certainly defeats the purpose of this type of technology.
These three factors are so important and relevant to the time, that it’s difficult for me, as an instructional technologist, to select one over the others. However, for the purpose of this blog assignment, I choose collaborative interaction.

Evolution of Collaborative interaction

Before examining the evolution of the element collaborative interaction, I’ll first explore its meaning. As can be seen, this terminology is a combination of two words. The first, collaboration, is derived from the word collaborate, which, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, means ‘to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor’. Interaction, on the other hand, according to dictionary.net, can be seen as a ‘mutual or reciprocal action or influence’. When combined, Ted Panitz, in his article, Collaborative versus cooperative learning – A comparison of the two concepts which will help us to understand the underlying nature of interactive learning, said that ‘collaboration is a philosophy of interaction and personal lifestyle where individuals are responsible for their actions, including learning and respect the abilities and contributions of their peers’. But how and when did this collaborative interaction started?

Collaborative interaction can be traced back to the era of Charles Darwin, the evolutionary biologist, naturalist and writer, who said ‘in the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed’. However, it was not until the pre-1980s that collaborative interaction really evolved. It experienced three phases of evolution, namely, messaging, network, and infrastructure. In the pre-1980s the first phase evolved with the use of e-mail or messaging technologies. The emphasis at this stage was on usage of the technology. By the 1990s, the collaboration for technology improved with the introduction of networking, as the second phase. Networking was more of an internal nature, as organization saw the need to relate to each other on this new platform. While this networking progress was being experienced, infrastructure was being examined. This new infrastructure, which is deemed the third phase, has a global impact on the technology. All three phases of the evolution could not have operated without the use of varying technology tools.

Online technology tools

As mentioned before, e-mail was the tool of the first phase of the evolution. Throughout the phases different tools became the main focus at times, both in the boardroom and in the classroom. Learners in both situations now have access to multiple tools, to not only enhance their technology skills, but to collaborate within the global village. This village includes the classmate or fellow employee that is either in the same town geographically, or thousands of miles away in another land. These collaborative tools in the 21st century includes Goffice, Zooos, wiki, blog, writeboard, and several others. These tools are used for collaboration in both the online classroom for learning and/or among employees for good job management at the workplace. It’s worth mentioning that the workplace can be from home as well.


Reference

Siemens, G. (2008). The future of distance education. (Vodcast). Principles of Distance Education DVD produced by Laureate Education, Inc. Baltimore.

Collaborate. In Merriam Webster dictionary (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collaboration

Interaction. In dictionary.net (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.dictionary.net/interaction

Collaborative versus cooperative learning – A comparison of the two concepts which will help us to understand the underlying nature of interactive learning (n.d.). Retrieved from http://home.capecod.net/~tpanitz/tedsarticles/coopdefinition.htm

darwin2009.no (n.d.). Retrieved from http://darwin2009.origonorge.no/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=6&MMN_position=16:16

Collaborative tools (2006) in Blog: Asynchronous Collaborative Learning Activities. Retrieved from http://acolla.blogspot.com

Collaborative writing tool - writely, writeboard, wiki (2005) in Blog: Asynchronous Collaborative Learning Activities. Retrieved from http://acolla.blogspot.com

Blog: The skill of collaborative interaction (2010). Retrieved from
http://www.mtdsalestraining.com/mtdblog/the-skill-of-collaborative-interaction.html